Our Nation’s Mental Health Crisis

It is not an understatement to say that we are facing a mental health crisis in our nation. Deaths of despair (suicides and deaths from drug overdose or alcohol-related disease) are rising across the board. Teenagers report staggering levels of anxiety and depression, often correlated to the number of hours they spend on social media. The rates for anxiety medication prescriptions have skyrocketed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The evidence reveals we are not well as a nation.

These trends follow years of social isolation. We are lonely, with significant numbers of people reporting that they have no friend they could call in a crisis beyond their family members. We are in the throes of an individualism so extreme that we are left to our own little islands, numbing our loneliness with another 10-second TikTok dance video or whatever opiate we are able to obtain.

But if it is true, as John Donne wrote in 1624, that “any man’s death diminishes me,” then we should take seriously the malaise affecting our culture. Make no mistake, we are facing a spiritual problem.

While the root causes of these problems appear merely technological, economic, or social, they are fundamentally spiritual.

Lest we think that despair, depression, and anxiety are modern problems, we forget our spiritual fathers and mothers who faced extreme hopelessness. Elijah despaired for his life and asked God to kill him. Job sat in the remnants of his life as his friends interrogated him. Jewish exiles wept in a new land as captors mocked them with requests to “sing the songs of Zion.” Jesus anxiously sweat blood as he prayed. The Bible does not ignore grief, dread, or worry.

But it is in that miry clay that the hope of the gospel springs forth, carrying with it the solution to the spiritual malady of our culture. Where we were isolated, God places us in a family of people united in Christ. Where we were forlorn, he offers us hope and consolation that we may be “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; . . . perplexed but not in despair” (2 Cor. 4:8-9).

The answer to our mental health challenges will not be found in policy proposals, though there is a role for the state and community organizations to play in alleviating some concerns. The answer will be found in a Church that carries with it the answer to the fundamental problem of the world broken by sin: a gospel of hope and promise that there is coming a day when our Lord Jesus will make all things new. As we await that day, let us bring hope to despair by bearing each other’s burdens, speaking the truth, living in the light, and working to see the darkness flee.